What is internet DOS commands?

Answer 1

*help

This command gives you a key to virtually everything you need to use DOS effectively. Can't remember the format for the FORMAT command? Not a problem! Type HELP FORMAT and press the ENTER key, and you've got everything you need to use FORMAT! This is true for virtually every DOS command so if you remember HELP command name you won't have any problems.

Another way to get help (or, if you don't install the HELP files suggest above, the ONLY way to get help in Windows 95) is to use /? (slash, question mark) after any command. This is faster and sometimes a more useful form of help, but it is generally only a listing of options. HELP is usually a more verbose help facility than /? is.

*copy

Once you know where to get help, the rest is easy. The whole purpose of DOS is to let you get around the directory tree easily. You use DOS to start applications (like my own P11.EXE program) and to copy files, delete files, build places to put files, and compare files, and so on. Files, Files, Files. That's what DOS is really for.

The #1 tool for file handling is the COPY command. Specify the "from" file first, then the "to" file. COPY only copies from within one directory at a time, but the "to" directory can be different. For copying entire directory structures, use XCOPY instead.

What makes COPY so powerful is that you can use "wild cards" like * and ? within the file name.

*xcopy

Like COPY, XCOPY can use wildcards to copy a file or group of files to another directory. But XCOPY is more powerful because it has the ability to copy an entire directory structure in one command. Use the /s option to accomplish this. Use HELP XCOPY to learn more, of course!

*cd

CD is the cold, hard way of doing things, but sometimes it's the right way. What makes it cold and hard is that in comparison to Norton's Change Directory (normally abbreviated NCD, but I abbreviated it to C on my system), the DOS CD command requires you to type the complete directory entry, all the way back to the root level! This is absurd. NCD, on the other hand, lets you type in anything that's close, and it will search your entire directory structure and plop you down right where you want to be. For example, to go to the \p11\pumps\svgapump directory, I can just type in: c svgap and immediately NCD will take me there. With CD, I would have to type cd \p11\pumps\svgapump to accomplish the same thing. Saving keystrokes is the name of the game. (That's why later in this tutorial, you'll learn to write batch files.)